


my blood is the ocean

by opensoulsurgery



Category: Far Cry 3
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, Fight Club - Freeform, Fight Club AU, Gen, but it's still fight club-y so i mean, more of a what happened to jason after the island than a true fight club au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:04:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensoulsurgery/pseuds/opensoulsurgery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jason's had six months worth of time to readjust but he can't. the city isn't the island and the ocean still rushes through his veins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. this is your life

**Author's Note:**

> a good friend and i were talking about this au last night and then she drew [this](http://gomenasigh.tumblr.com/post/47326556706/au-where-jason-fails-to-readjust-to-society-and) which inspired me to try and write it out so
> 
> here we go

Jason doesn’t adjust well.

It’s been six months since Rook Island, six months since he’s felt alive, free of the crushing weight of Los Angeles and six months for him to regret taking his time on the island for granted.

           ( And how fucked up is that? ) 

His eyes snap awake — as they do most nights  — startled because he’s staring up at a plaster ceiling and not at the stars or the inside of a cave. There’s no sound of water rushing up to meet the beach or the call of birds he’s never seen before chirping in the trees. It’s always the same. A dark ceiling, bleak and uncomfortable. It shrouds him in shadows that he can’t shake off. 

His stomach roils and so he clenches his eyes shut, tries to block out the sound of a car alarm going off in the distance. Tries to force up the calming sound of a beach at night. It doesn’t work, never does.

It’s been six months and Jason still can’t sleep.  

The clicks of a keyboard, an elevator dinging, the sounds of trains clattering on the tracks. His coworker's heels click-clacking on the tiled floor of the lobby in the office, the voice of power-hungry businesswoman at Starbucks (  _i’ll have one venti sugar free, no fat, no foam, caramel latte with an extra shot of espresso, thanks_ ). They all sound like nails on chalkboard to him. 

The island runs through his veins like his own blood and there are no transfusions available. Every inhale of this stale city air is slowly suffocating him and he feels like he’s drowning.

Like he’s struggling for the surface but he’s flipped upside down and he keeps diving to the ocean floor. 

He rolls out of bed, stretches out stiff bones and muscles that feel fused together and underworked. The digital clock — digital; he sneers — reads 5:06am and he has to be awake in two hours. No sense in going back to sleep so he trades his sweatpants and ratty shirt for shorts and another ratty shirt, laces up his running shoes. His eyes flicker to the sleeping form curled under tangled bedsheets before grabbing his iPod from the dresser and slipping out of the room. 

Liza doesn’t need to know about this early morning run. He’ll be back and in the shower before she's awake. 

He takes the stairs down, avoiding the elevator. When he steps outside the building, he stops for a moment, closes his eyes, breathes in the stale air and tries to pretend it carries the salt tang of Rook Island. 

It doesn’t (never does) and Vaas sniggers quietly in his ear. 

_I told you so, Jason, I fucking told you._

His eyes screw shut, the corners of his eyes crinkling in frustration as the voice mocks him, sets his shoulders in a tense line as if he’s ready to spring into an attack.  

_I_ _fucking toooold you. You’re fucked, hermano. I was right all along._

His breath hitches in his chest and when his eyes fly open there's a fury burning hot in his veins. He fully expects to see the pirate standing at the bottom of the stairs but he’s met with nothing but an empty street. The laughing fades with each shaky step he takes to the sidewalk and he puts in the headphones, cranking the volume up and blocking everything out.  

His feet hit the pavement hard and it’s a lot unlike the way the sand flowed underneath his shoes on the island. His inhales deeply exhales deeply — stale air in, stale air out. He envisions the beach, the water lapping the shore, palm trees arching over the sand to provide a slice of shade from the withering heat of the sun, but the hard surface of the cement shatters the illusion. He’s in Los Angeles, thousands of miles away from the only place he wants to be.

Funny, that. His whole time there was spent trying to get home and now that he’s back all he wants is the salt water and the clean air and a gun firmly gripped in his hands. 

Eager employees, insomniacs, and stragglers from the night before plod through the streets, shoulders hunched as if to protect themselves from the harsh conditions of the city. Jason flows past them like a gust of wind, breathing hard and pushing himself until his legs burn and drawing in air becomes painful.  The run brings him to an overlook by a pond. Run down, not kept up by the city. His hands curl tightly around the rusty iron fence surrounding the water.

The sun peeks over the horizon and he wonders how long he’s been running for because it was pitch black when he set out. He should've checked the clock before leaving.Rubbing his forehead, a minor headache beginning it's slow build, he watches red bloom across the morning sky with a lacklustre enthusiasm because nothing compares to seeing the sun rise over the ocean. 

After a moment, he turns his back to it, leans against the fence, and watches his shadow grow before him as the sun continues its ascent. Then, abruptly and shattering the moment, his phone goes off,  the irritating vibration buzzing in his pocket and,  _shit,_ he was probably supposed to be back by now. He takes out the headphones, music still blaring from the speakers and answers.

“Yeah?” His voice comes out a little breathless.

“Jason? Where are you? I woke up and you weren’t here.” 

“I’m, uh—“ He glances around, realizes he doesn’t quite know where he is. Has he ever been in this part of town before? “Out. For a run.” 

“Oh.” He hears her breath leave her in relieved little huff. “Be back soon, okay? You have work, remember?” He swipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’m heading back now. I’ll see you soon.” 

There’s a pause. “Love you.”  

“Love you, too.” And he ends the call, guilt swelling in his chest for a reason he can’t quite place. 

He loses himself on the run back, too. The buildings blur into a grey mass, shifting and melding until he thinks he can see brush and trees and open sky from the corner of his eye. The illusion’s broken when he’s met with the face of his building, bricks and concrete solidifying and reforming, and he rubs at his eyes.  

_So fucked_ , Vaas whispers in his ear. 

Straightening up, a scowl pulls the lines of his face together in an expression he feels comfortable wearing. “ _Fuck_ you,” Jason mutters under his breath and he slams the door behind him on the way in, the frame rattling. Sweat drips in his eyes and he fumbles for the key in his pocket to unlock the door of the apartment when Liza opens it from the other side with a smile and a water bottle held out to him.  

“You sounded like you needed some water on the phone.”  

Jason uncaps the bottle and takes a long sip, wipes more sweat from his eyes. Tossing his shoulder up in a shrug, he says, “Thanks.”

He has less and less to say these days.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Liza’s nod, a small frown accentuating the hard lines of her face formed during her kidnapping, and Jason feels that pang of guilt again. “I better get ready for work. I’ll see you tonight?” 

She nods again, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah. I think I’ll be home early tonight. It’s a short shoot today.”  

Jason plants a kiss on her lips then turns to head to the washroom but before he can get very far she says, “Are you okay, Jason?”

She wears her trademark look of worry — open and trusting eyes, trying to see past the walls Jason has built around himself, past the smiles he plasters on his face and the faux niceties he hands out like a charity. But he’s too good at constructing masks and playing the role he’s expected to these days.

After all, he’s had six months of practice.

So, he smiles and he nods and it’s all very reassuring and feels like the Jason of old. And he hates it and hates the mask and wants to scream. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” _No you’re not._ “Don’t worry about me. Have a good day, alright? I’ll see you tonight.” 

* * *

_Ti_ _ck tock tick tock tick tock tick tock._

Jason grinds his teeth, the clock continues it’s incessant ticking and he wonders if he can sneak out for another coffee break. He inhales, he exhales and then he does it again and again, staring at the screen of his computer until his eyes burn and he clenches them shut.

The ticking reminds him of a timer: counting down until his final moment.

This is his life and it’s ending one minute at a time. 

He’s here, in this cubicle, in this job, with a tie around his neck that feels like a noose, for Liza. He doesn’t want to be here; he wants to be far, far away but he has a role to play, and this is part of the deal. She suggested routine. It’ll help you, she said, give you structure. Sitting around aimlessly, isn’t going to help you recover. You're listless.

That’s the word she always uses: recover. 

But he doesn’t want to recover because he doesn’t have anything to recover from. Recovery is a far-fetched notion for people who haven’t realized their full potential, for people who want to live in their tiny little bubble and plug their fingers into their ears and ignore the world.

And structure? Fuck off with structure. It’s constricting, stifling and only ever exacerbates the feeling of drowning.

And yet, he put in his resume anyway, thinking ( hoping ) it wouldn’t go anywhere but a couple days later he got the call for an interview, and shortly after that he was buying dress shirts and ties and Liza was beaming.

The day is monotonous, just like every day is monotonous in the same way. He gets asked the same questions, fills out the same paperwork, organizes the same data. He knows he should try but he makes no attempt to mask his disgust. What was the point? It’s certain everyone here is just as miserable as he is. Maybe he can be an inspiration to them.

Stop pretending like you care. Life is freer that way.

       (  _And how’s that working out for you, Snow White?_ )

He pushes himself away from the desk, the ticking of the clock becoming overwhelming and grabs a stack of papers from his desk and his half-finished coffee. His feet guide him to the copy machine and he begins to make copies, dead eyes focused on the bulky piece of machinery. From his peripheral, he notices a coworker sidle up, his own coffee cup in hand, tie on straight and hair smoothed back. Clean shaven with a faux smile of politeness stretched across his face.

“Heeeeey, Brody. How you doing, man?”

Jason sneers a bit.

“Fine,” he answers. “Just peachy.” They lapse into a silence — awkward on the part of his coworker he’s sure ( what was his name again? ) — and then he shuffles off with a wary smile and a nod. Blowing out a breath, Jason clutches his own coffee, the paper cup crumpling underneath the grip of his fingers digging into it. The copy machine churns out one, two, five, ten copies of the paperwork and he takes a sip. 

He feels dead. He’s been dead for six months and no one’s noticed. They suspect maybe, Liza certainly does, but they cling onto optimism with a white-knuckled grip and ignore the way his eyes glaze over when he thinks no one is watching. He feels like a bomb that’s wired to blow. One where the countdown has been torn off and no one knows just exactly when it’s set to explode. Do they have twenty minutes to escape the blast radius or is it too late to try?

       ( He thinks it’s too late. )

His veins are a fuse and the island is the light. Sparks crackle and burn and the island replaces his blood and soon it’s going to hit his heart and he won’t claim responsibility for the aftermath. 

After all, all of this is Vaas Montenegro's fault. 

He needs something to soothe the itch, ice the burn and stamp out the fuse. Standing here, by this copier, only makes things worse. He drains the rest of his coffee and chucks the cup in the trash.

* * *

 When he gets home that night, he’s contemplating the beneficial uses of cocaine in snapping him out of this lethargy. It’s Liza’s voice that snaps him out of the thought, but he files it away for later.

 “You’re not okay.”

It’s not a “How are you?” or a “How was your day?” — no, Liza jumps straight to the point. Always does.

It was one of the things about her that he loved so much — but right now, it’s anything but a quality trait. He tries to muster up a response quicker than she can drag him into a conversation about feelings and flashbacks and _are you having nightmares again_? But she’s quick and he’s sluggish and before he can blink he’s on the couch and she has his hands in hers.  

“It’s nothing,” he finally pulls out. “It was a long day at work. The boss is really piling shit on.” But she shakes her head, defiant and he can see the way she’s had enough with his evasions in her eyes. 

“Stop trying to play the macho man, Jason. I know you’re hardly sleeping.” She brings a hand up to his cheek and it feels ice cold against the heat of his own skin. “You don’t have to be the saviour anymore.” 

He bites back a bitter laugh. 

“There’s this, um, this group.” Some of the defiance in her eyes melts away into trepidation. She fumbles through some scattered magazines on the coffee table before pulling out a pamphlet from the bottom of the pile. Quaint and bright and in bold letters plastered across the front it reads _Trauma Survivors Support Group_. “They meet once a week at the community centre on Marigold Street. I think … I think this would be good for you.”  

She’s holding it out to him and he has no choice but to accept it and make a show of flipping through it. _We can’t alter life threatening events but we can alter how they affect our quality of life_ , the pamphlet reads. Jason wants to roll his eyes and struggles against it. 

I’m a survivor, sure, he wants to say, but I don’t need support. There was trauma but it only taught me who I’m really supposed to be. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, tastes copper flooding his mouth. Liza looks at him expectantly and what other choice does he have?

 He swallows.

“I’ll go.” 

Liza looks surprised, eyebrows raised to her hairline before a wide smile spreads across her lips and she throws her arms around his neck. “This will be good for you. I promise.” 

The blood on his tongue tastes sweet and something under his skin itches, and there’s no reason for it but he smells salt in the air. He’s not going to find any cures in a poorly lit room in the basement of a rundown community centre.

_You’re fucked, Jason._

It takes everything for him not to scream at Vaas then and there.

 


	2. we just had a near life experience

He puts in overtime at work that day to avoid going home to Liza. Liza who is trying really hard to bring back the Jason that was, Liza who doesn’t understand that the Jason that was died with Grant.

It’s frustrating.

But she’s not entirely unavoidable and when four o’clock rolls around she sends a text message that reads:

_Hope it goes well tonight. Love you, J. xoxo_

Jason types out a reply ( love you too xoxo ) and feels the stare of his boss as he stops outside the cramped cubicle. “No personal texts on the job, Brody.” Jason looks up, but sluggishly like he’s moving through molasses; the city is weighing him down — and he hits the send button.

 _Cocky, hermano_ , Vaas says.

Jason agrees. His boss doesn’t so much.

“You’re staying late tonight, yeah? Make these your priority.” A folder three inches thick drops on his desk, and the unimpressed look on his boss’ face melts into something more self-satisfied. “You can have all these done by the time you leave, right?”

“Sure.” Fuck you.

“Good. And roll down your sleeves. No tattoos visible on the job. You should know this by now.”

Jason grunts in response but complies. The sleeves are rumpled, the shirt is three days worn, and a little bit of tugging is required to pull them in a decent fashion. The tattoos are covered and he ignores the way he makes him feel caged. The designs meant something once, but here they get an eye roll. He looks like an asshole who thought tribal tattoos looked badass.

It’s 6:40 when he leaves the office, loosening his tie with one hand and sipping his third coffee that day with the other. A mild headache throbs behind his eyes, and the aspirin sitting in his desk, now empty, has done nothing to help. Maybe it’s all the coffee he drinks; he goes through cup after cup but trying to get through his day without the caffeine was like trying to navigate an unfamiliar city in a thick fog.

On his way to the elevator bank, he passes a coworker hunched over mounds of paperwork with only a desk lamp and the computer screen for illumination. A grande latte sits next to a kitschy pen holder. He glances up, says goodnight, and Jason realizes he can’t remember the guy’s name.

Thomas, Chris, Bill? No, those don’t sound right.

Mark? Maybe.

He realizes then how few connections he’s made with his coworkers. Sure, he knows his bosses name (Anthony) and his secretary (Marie, aspiring photojournalist who never shuts up), but there are no real friends, no Friday night drinks, no gossiping by the copy machine. These people, they live static lives. They arrive at eight, they go through the motions of the work day, follow trends, fawn over celebrities who will never ever know they exist. Everyday is exactly the same.

It’s frustrating to spend your days with people who don’t know what it truly means to be alive.

Jason mumbles something in response to Maybe Mark — goodnight or fuck off, it could’ve been anything — and takes the stairs down all six floors. The elevators here rattle and creak. The stairs are cold and dimly lit with cement floors and cement walls, but it’s better than being stuffed in that box that shudders every time it came to a stop on a floor.

He feels dead, but he doesn’t want to die, thank you very much.

* * *

Trauma Survivors Support Group, the sign reads, bolded emphasis on the word survivor to empower those who walked through the door.

The room smells like bad coffee and nightmares, people shuffling towards the same seat they presumably take every week, murmuring hushed greetings to those that they knew.

Jason’s overcome with an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia and he tries to swim to the surface and breathe freely, but it’s an unsuccessful attempt. He spares the last of his air with short and slow breaths.

 Vaas whispers harshly in his ear: This is no place for you, hermano.

Then mockingly: Unless you’ve gotten on soft on me. You have, haven’t you?

Jason wants to tell him to shut up, nearly does—

      ( and at that Vaas sniggers as if he knows. )

—but he doesn’t need these people to think he’s crazy.

_But aren’t you?_

With his lip pulled back in a faint sneer, he reluctantly takes a seat, hands collapsed lamely in his lamely in his lap.

Vaas is right. This is no place for him. He is a survivor, but does he need support? This ‘sit in a circle and talk about your feelings’ bullshit?

Fuck no.

He wants to feel alive again, wants his blood to pump through his veins and to feel the endorphins snapping off electric reactions in his brain.

This? This feels like being buried alive. No one around to hear you scream except for yourself—

_And me._

—as your voice is swallowed into the dry earth.

“—and I see we have a few new faces tonight.” A gentle smile is shot in Jason’s direction from the facilitator. He stares blankly in return. “Feel free to speak any time you wish but don’t feel obligated. Now then, Adam. Last week you were—“ Jason tunes out, turns his eyes skyward to count the crack in the building’s old ceiling.

They should consider renovations.

Voices drone on in the background, and the clock on the wall ticks by agonizingly slow. His eyes threaten to close on him and he bites down on the inside of his cheek to force himself awake.

_Boring, aren’t they, hermano? These people here? They couldn’t deal with the shit life threw at them. But you. Jason, man, you survived your own  
        version of hell, didn’t you? Came out a stronger man. You’re welcome, by the way._

Jason grits his teeth and tries to ignore the voice of the dead man. Leave me the fuck alone, he wants to say, but he can’t. Not with people around. Vaas snickers mockingly in his ear and Jason rubs at the tatau.

( The sleeves are rolled up again; he doesn't remember when that happened. )

It should’ve been funny how he agrees with Vaas now when he so vehemently disagreed with everything he said while the pirate was still alive to terrorize him, but it wasn’t. Jason hates it. It leaves a taste in his mouth like ocean air, blood, and salt.

( He wishes he didn’t like the taste. )

“Now it’s time for the one-on-ones.”

Jason’s eyes snap into focus.

Fuck.

He stays in his seat as the other people shuffle around the room to find partners. Maybe he can sneak out, grab a beer before heading home so Liza thinks he’s stayed the entire time.

Then there’s a shadow in front of him.

“Jason, right?”

 Fuck.

“Yeah.”

“Jackson. Looks like you could use a partner.”

Jason eyes the door behind Jackson. “Uh, yeah. I guess.”

Jackson drags a chair over, straddles it and props his elbows up on the back. “First time at one of these things?” Jason nods, hoping a one-sided conversation will fizzle out this partnership.

“I can tell. I was the same my first time. It took me a month before I was really able to open up to anyone. It ain’t easy to talk about.”

Jackson looks eager. Jason indulges him. “What’s your story?”

“I’m a combat veteran. Served three tours in Iraq and saw more shit than I ever thought I would. I still wake up in cold sweats sometimes. For a long while, I turned to alcohol, but it’s gotten better. I’m willing to leave the house now.” The ex-soldier smiles crookedly, proud of his figurative badge of honour.

Combat veteran. Jason mulls over that; he thinks of himself as a sort of combat veteran. The label feels applicable enough. It was a scaled down war he fought, sure, but it was still a war. He saved his friends, saved the locals, won the war — and that was the biggest difference between him and his friend Jackson over there. Jackson’s war still raged on. Jason singlehandedly won his.

“What about your story? You can be vague about it. No pressure.”

Jason leans back in his chair, runs a tongue over his lips and returns his eyes skyward away from Jackson’s prying fucking stare. “Kidnapped,” he says simply. “I was kidnapped by some pirates.” Jackson looks disbelieving and Jason can see the question forming on his lips before he speaks. “I killed them all.” He swallows the grin threatening to break the indifferent expression on his face, bites down on the inside of his cheek again. Thinking about it brings back the rush, the adrenaline, and his fingers twitch with muscle memory.

Jackson’s eyes widen, and his gaze drops, “Shit, man—“ He cuts himself off mid-sentence, his eyes focusing on the stump that used to be Jason’s ring finger. “They, uh— They do that?”

Jason opens up his left hand, stares at it thoughtfully before balling it into a fist and locks eyes with the other man.

“No. I lost it in a poker game.”

Jackson excuses himself to the washroom.

Free at last, Jason wanders over to the table pushed solemnly against the back wall. The doughnuts look alright, but the coffee tastes like tar no matter how much sugar Jason puts in it. He leans against the wall, watches everyone shed tears and pat each other reassuringly on the back like that was going to fix everything.

Jason can’t relate. He doesn’t need empty words and pitying voices and false hope. He’s not lost, he’s not scared, he’s not confused; he knows where he needs to go, he knows what he needs. He won’t find it here.

Something flashes in the corner of his eye. Someone else has joined him by the wall, but when he turns, with an unimpressed look pulled across his features, no one is there.

Weird.

He finishes the rest of poor excuse for coffee in one big swig and crunches the styrofoam cup in his hand. The pairs were breaking up and returning to their seats, the second half of the session beginning, and he doesn’t want to be here anymore. Jason tosses the cup in the trash and heads out, shutting the door loudly behind him.

The hallway is brightly lit with fluorescent lights that only serve to make his headache angrier — a pulsing in his temples, crawling to the base of his neck. It's too bright and the recycled air tastes like dust. Claustrophobia hangs over him, bearing down with it’s crushing weight, and he picks up the pace. Another hallway, a staircase and the exit would be in reach. Muffled voices from other rooms filter out into the desolate hallway and he wonders what other support groups meet in here.

By the staircase, a sign hangs posted on a cork board.

        Incest Survivors Anonymous. 6-8pm on Mondays and Thursdays. Room 3B.

        Narcotics Anonymous. 10am-1pm on Sundays; 6-8pm on Fridays. Room 12.

        Alcoholics Anonymous. 9-11am on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; 7-9pm on Monday. Room 7A.

        Free and Clear (Brain Parasites). 6-8pm on Tuesdays. Room 6.

The list continues on and on it seems, but he's snapped out of his thoughts by the sound of footsteps descending the stairs and abruptly stopping. He gets the familiar feeling of someone staring holes in the back of his head.

He turns, intending to brush past them.

Stops.

Keith looks a little like a deer in headlights.

( Or a deer who's caught the gleam of light from his sniper rifle's scope before he pulls the trigger. )

He shouldn't be surprised to see his friend here. They went through hell and back and the wounds dug too deep to ever truly heal.

“Jason?" He sounds surprised.

"Keith, hey, man.” Nonchalant, apathetic. Whatever, here I am.

"What're you—” Keith's question trails off before he can finish it, and embarrassment fills his eyes as he glances away.

They're both here for the same thing, more or less. Jason begins to turn back to the informative little flyer with its neat little font in lieu of an answer, searches the list for the group Keith is here for. A bedraggled looking woman shuffles past them quietly, ignores their existence.

As far as Jason is aware, Keith hadn't told anyone what actually happened to him on the island. Everyone knew he was bought by someone but no one asked for specifics and Keith was content to keep the details to himself, coiled tightly in his chest. The wires were probably ready to snap. After returning, his boss offered him paid medical leave for the year and he moved back to Los Angeles. Something about being close to those who went through the same ordeal, Jason thinks.

He's not sure that's working out very well for Keith. The bags under his eyes look like bruises, too.

Jason breaks up the silence. "I was at one of those support group meetings. Liza's idea."

"Is it helping?" His voice takes on a hopeful lilt. Jason can’t help but wonder if Keith has been going to this regularly, waiting for that one meeting where everything just seemed to click.

"This was the first one I've been to. I left." Jason doesn't feel bad when Keith's eyes darken a little. The truth is better than false hope. Keith stares down the hallway then his eyes flick to his watch.

"Want to grab a beer?"

Jason's lips quirk up. "Definitely."

He drives them down to a familiar haunt after punching out a quick text to Liza about his whereabouts. A place he used to hang out at with the group before everything went down. It's not quite the same anymore.

The bar is made from good wood that's long been since worn down from too many glasses sitting and sliding across the surface, and the walls are lined with old antique decorations that makes the space seem smaller than it is. It felt like home once, but now home was an island thousands of miles away. It dawns on Jason that he doesn't know where Rook Island is and there's a pang of homesickness that grows painfully in his chest.

They take a table by the back and order some beers. It's alright, but doesn't compare to the lager on the island. That tasted atrocious at first, as if someone knocked a jar of sand in the brew, but it had grown on him and now this American stuff tasted like garbage.

_You miss home, don't you, Snow White?_

Fuck off, Jason thinks.

"You look like shit, man." Off to a good start.

"I could say the same about you." The words aren't meant maliciously, but Keith shuts down, stares down at the amber liquid sitting in his glass. "I haven't been sleeping either," Jason offers.

Keith's eyes draw up and he looks older than his thirty years. "No? No, I guess not." They share a hollow laugh of companionship found in mutual terrors. "It doesn't come easy anymore."

"Maybe we should ask Ollie for some of his weed." This laugh is a little less hollow, and they clink their glasses together before drawing long pulls.

Jason masks the grimace that tries to form as the drink slides down his throat. This is supposed to be his favourite brand. Jason swallows and clears his throat. "Have you been going to those meetings long?"

Keith's shoulder tense, his breath comes out slow and he takes another pull. "Four months," he says slowly. "Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it leaves me feeling—" He hesitates as if giving away some dark secret. Jason counts the cracks in his mask. “—vulnerable. Does that make sense?"

Jason nods in understanding as if he can sympathize. He can’t. Encouraged, Keith leans forward, elbows resting on the pockmarked wooden table. "I don't think it's helping-helping, you know?. I mean, I still have ... nightmares. I don’t know what I need anymore.”

Jason contemplates that for a moment. "What about a shot of tequila?" The car can sit in the parking lot for the night.

Keith happily complies.

Once the shots glasses have been emptied and shoved off to the side, Keith turns the focus onto Jason, eager to push the topic away from himself. "What about you?" Jason shrugs and downs the rest of the bitter beer.

"I've seen better days." Like the one where you watched the sunrise from atop a radio tower? “Every day is the same. Dull, mostly.” It's a rare moment of honesty and he instantly wishes he could take the words back. He expects Keith to ask him to elaborate and he's not sure how to skirt around the itch of violence underneath his skin. He distracts them with another round of beers.

It still doesn't taste like how he wants.

They dance around the subject of the island for the rest of the time they're there. Keith doesn't want to think about it and Jason thinks about it too much. The rest of the conversation is filled with mindless babble, distractions, and a couple of beers later they're well on their way to drunk.

“We should get out of here,” Keith says, a slight slur in his voice, and then he chuckles, low and almost bitter. “The booze might help me sleep tonight.”

Jason can’t find a reason to stay, anyway. He agrees.

They split the tab and grab their jackets, weaving their way through the bar to the door.

The crowd's changed noticeably since they arrived, the atmosphere shifting with the exchange of clientele. A rowdier bunch has replaced the yuppie office workers, younger folk filtering in for a Friday night on the town. Alcohol flows and when it does tempers flare. An unsteady individual, rougher looking with a mop of dark hair and a crooked nose, collides with Jason.

They stumble.

The dark-haired man, who’s clearly had a couple drinks before showing up here, places the blame squarely on Jason's shoulders. One of those 'don't get in my space or we're gonna have a problem even if it's technically my fault' assholes.

Jason hates guys like these. Once, he might’ve muttered an apology under his breath and kept walking, but he shoots the guy a stiff glare. Dominating. Intimidating. It comes easily.

The look isn’t taken kindly.

The guys throws a punch, but Jason blocks it and returns the favour. His fist squarely connects with the guy’s cheekbone as he throws weight into the force of the hit. The drunk stumbles backwards, caught off-guard and starts mouthing off — words that Jason can’t hear; there’s an ocean in his head and the waves are rough tonight.

When Jason reflects on this later he'll compare it to a switch being flicked on because all of a sudden he's laying into this guy with six months worth of anger and frustration.

But he’s not perfect ( no, no, no, he’s far from that; he never wants to be perfect ) and it was only a matter of time before the tides turned on him.

There's the crack of something hard against his face, and blood, wet and warm, spills from his nose in a rush. The hit might have stopped a saner man, but the blood tastes like the island and it's encouragement. Jason hauls himself straight using a nearby table, and he can feel Keith tugging on his sleeve.

        ( "Come on, Jason. Let's get out of here. Leave it. Let's go." )

But he shrugs out of Keith's grip, spots a mostly empty glass of beer on the table. Before he can react, the guy throws another swing but Jason's had practice. He ducks out of the way, the fist sailing past his ear into empty air. In the moment it takes the other man to regain his stance, Jason grabs the glass and cracks it over his head. Shards rip cuts in his scalp and litter the scuffed up floor. The guy lets out a snarl, clutching at his head as rage fills his eyes.

The world turns red and bruised and bloody in Jason's vision, and the quiet rational part of his mind knows his behaviour is a gross over-exaggeration, but it's become a hell of a lot easier to breathe. His opponent throws a hook that nearly knocks Jason off his feet, but he refuses to fall. The world tilts on its axis and he snarls out his determination. It's been six months since he's done something like this, but he'll be damned if that was going to stop him from winning.

There's yelling in the background, Keith’s voice somewhere in the mix, but it only vaguely registers with him. Someone could be screaming about calling the cops or maybe no one was screaming at all. It doesn't matter either way because all that matters is the adrenaline that pulses through his veins as they rain blow after blow on each other.

Jason doesn't realize it, but he's grinning through a split lip and blood continues to pour from his nose. He takes two steps, dodges a blow, and laughs, really genuinely laughs for the first time in months.

He thought he had forgotten how to feel human, but right now that feeling doesn't seem so far off. He's lighter, he's freer. Maybe he is alive. Maybe he’s not the dead man walking he thought he’s been for all these months.

His opponent snarls something but Jason can't hear him over the sound of the ocean rushing in his ears. One, two, three steps forward, and Jason grabs a fistful of the guy’s shirt before slamming his fist into the guy's stomach. He slumps in Jason's arms, another forceful exhalation of breath escaping through parted lips. Jason is ready to deliver another blow, desperately wants to, but someone is dragging him away before he can do anything. The guy falls out of his grasp and onto the floor, and no one is rushing to help him because all his buddies are staring at Jason with astonishment.

Animalistic glee fills his eyes and he spits out a wad of blood on the floor.

"What the hell was that?!"

It takes a moment to register Keith's voice and the fact that he's standing outside. A warm breeze brushes past his face and he uses the back of his hand to wipe away the blood from his nose. His body aches and he knows in the morning he'll wake up with more bruises than he can count.

He's grinning again. Keith's staring at him like he's certifiable and maybe he is, but it's only an unimportant afterthought.

For the first time in six months, he's alive.


	3. nothing is static

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing tastes as good as jason losing his mind let's be real here

The apartment’s empty when he gets home, drunk and bruised. There’s no light except for what’s streaming in through the window from the lamps lining the streets. The only sound is the quiet hum coming from the soon-to-be-dying fridge, but he pauses in the doorway anyway, straining for any sound of the other occupant. Liza could be sleeping, she could be on her laptop in the bedroom, not having heard him enter. If she is home, he wants to sneak by and wipe the blood off his face in the washroom before she can get a look at how battered he looks.

Blood bothers her more than it used to. He can’t blame her.

_But it’s just blood. Blood is nothing. Why should it bother anyone?_

But the apartment is quiet and she must still be at work. A late shoot. Did she mention that this morning? He couldn’t remember. Regardless, he pads across the hardwood floor with quiet steps.

A digital clock, resting on the end table by the couch, tells him that it’s a little past midnight. Hours past when he should’ve been home and he checks his phone for any messages from Liza.

Nothing.

She had to be working. He’s dodged the bullet.

The red light from the clock irritates him, digging into his eyes, so he flips it, turns the clock to face to wall instead.

Jason peers into the darkness of their bedroom before flicking on the light. It fills the room, showing him an empty bed, the sheets tucked neatly into place. It was just him and his bruises. Rolling his shoulders, he smiles in relief.

For the first time in half a year he doesn’t feel bogged down by an invisible weight crushing his shoulders, arms struggling to help carry the burden. The city isn’t suffocating him and he can finally breathe. The ocean rushes through his veins freely; there are no dams blocking the current anymore.

Jason loosens his tie, sliding it off his neck and drops it onto the floor by his side of the bed. The shirt is discarded, too, crumpling on top of the tie, white and red and wrinkled. As he makes his way to the washroom, he idly wonders how he’s going to get the bloodstains out of the fabric. There he gets his first look at the damage.

The skin around his left eye is starting to darken, a blue tinge slowly building underneath his skin. His nose isn’t broken but it left a bloody mess just above his lip. Bringing his fingers up to his lips, he finds the blood there is still sticky. His ribs will be a painted canvas of bruises come the morning. He presses down on a tender spot with a hiss.

It stings like hell.

He grins.

He looks like a disaster and he can’t shake off how much he likes it.

The pain reminds him of the island and the bruises are like trophies, one’s he’d wear proudly. Signs of a warrior, he thinks to himself, even in this cement jungle.

But the cuts and scrapes on his face aren’t going to fix themselves and he has enough sense to patch himself up. There was a first aid kit around here somewhere, he remembers, Liza bought it almost immediately after they first moved in together.

        ( Not that he really needs a first aid kid. Jason knew better than most how to patch himself up without bandages and antiseptic. )

He finds it tucked in the back of the cupboard underneath the sink, unopened and unused probably much to Liza’s relief. There’s one roll of wrap, two dozen or so bandages, cotton, rubbing alcohol, nothing out of the ordinary and everything he needs. He rests the kit on the edge of the sink before grabbing a washcloth and wetting it to wipe the blood from his face. The water is warm and the washcloth turns red. The cool water runs a shade of pink down his face.

You were never more alive than you were with death haunting you from the brush life. You were never more aware of your morality in those moments.

Death taught Jason how to live, how to feel alive, how to be his own man and take what he wanted.

And he missed that like hell. The bar fight was like a snapshot, a summary of his life had been for too short a period of time.

The thrill of seeing your opponent on the ground because of you was what he needed after six months of flatlining. There was no amount of caffeine that would make him feel more awake, more alive than he does now.

He’d much rather wake up to a fist fight than another goddamn dark roast coffee, no sugar, no milk, thanks.

If he did he might be better able to deal with his boss’ shit.

He wrings out the washcloth, and watches the water swirl down the drain.

It’s like a high, how he feels right now. A needle filled with that something that brought him back to life and he lets out a breath, free and clear, just because he can.

But it’s a short-lived high.

And the crash starts when something catches his eye in the mirror. A shadowed figuring, leaning up against the wall behind him, but it’s too quick to catch. When he looks up all he sees is his proud and battered face staring back at him, the bruises a little more pronounced than they were a minute ago.

It’s late, he tells himself, I’m tired and buzzed and beaten up.

Jason grabs the Vaseline from the kit. His split lip needs it, god knows, and he applies it carefully, dabbing it on so the bleeding doesn’t start up again. His shirt is already stained with blood, the sink doesn’t need it’s own coating.

The back of his neck prickles. the hairs raising. He knows the feeling of being watched all too well. Hunting taught you two things: how to be the predator and when you’re the prey. Knowing when something is creeping up behind you becomes a sort of sixth sense. He tries to tell himself it’s nothing but the voice in his head is unconvincing, and he leans back to peer out the door like he needs to prove to himself that no one is here but himself.

“Hello?” He calls out as if that, too, would appease the sudden paranoia.

There’s no response.

Obviously.

He shakes his head, pushes away the prickling sensation of being studied.

What he needs is an ice pack on his eyes and a moment of peace, not to entertain thoughts of phantom ghosts running around his apartment. The kit is tucked away, pressed into the back of the cupboard, looking as untouched as it did before he stumbled in through the door. As he stands, he catches sight of the dark shadow in the corner of his vision again. The hair on the back of his neck raises and he stills as if he was the prey. Shallow breaths, old habits.

Slowly, he turns his gaze. The rational voice in his head ( though quiet and reserved on most days ) tells him that he’s not going to see anyone but him.

The rational voices fades out when he’s met with Vaas staring back at him through the mirror. He’s leaning against the wall, arms folded loosely across his chest with one food propped up flat against the wall.

He killed this man six months ago. His head hurts.

His heart kicks into overdrive, pounding against his chest with a thump, thump, thump, and Vaas gives him a mocking grin.

        _Peek-a-boo, hermano._

Jason spins, fully expecting to see the pirate’s jeering grin face-to-face, to see him really actually fucking standing there, but he’s met with only the wall, a shade of boring off-white. The sound of his pounding fills his ears like a drumbeat and he slowly glances over his shoulder at the mirror, swallowing his fear.

Nothing.

He’s gone.

He grips the edge of the sink to keep himself on two feet because Vaas’ mocking voice in his head was nothing new but actually fucking seeing the man is.

The monster in his head didn’t start talking until about a month and a half after they got back. Incidentally, right when he and Liza had settled into this apartment together and everyone seemed to be functioning alright. Relatively speaking.

Things were okay, seemed manageable, and then Vaas made his grand reappearance.

 _“Miss me, homeboy?”_ was the first thing he whispered into Jason’s hear as if the two were buddies who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. It might not have been so unnerving if the voice hadn’t sounded like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. And it might not have been so bad if he wasn’t at work, co-workers milling about, and clutching the edge of his desk like his life depended on it. An itch crawled under his skin and Vaas laughed and said, _“I missed you, too.”_ He spent the rest of the day trying to bring himself down by bringing himself up with coffee after coffee ( large dark roast, no sugar, no milk, thanks. ). He hadn’t slept the night before, he thought desperately, maybe it was a sleep-deprived mind playing tricks on him.

His voice sounded shaky even in his own head.

Vaas isn’t here, Vaas isn’t here, he told himself day after day after day. It became a sick mantra. Vaas isn’t here. He’s dead. He’s dead, I killed him myself. His body is thousands of miles away. It was reassurance after reassurance until the mocking little voice in his head was nothing but a minor nuisance. An annoying companion that was fond of berating everyone’s actions.

        ( _These people, they sit around all day watching fucking television? Get some sunshine._ )

        ( _You lock yourself up like animals in a cage sitting all day in these fucking little cubes_  
          drinking your expensive coffee in your expensive suits.  _Jason, Jason, Jason, did I teach_  
          _you nothing?_ )

        ( _Do you miss it, Jason? Do you miss the way they called your name because you were their hero, hmm? Do you?_ )

But right now he’s dizzy and his heart is pounding and he’s white-knuckling the sink like his life depends on it. My mind playing tricks on me, he tells himself, it’s nothing. I saw nothing. I’m buzzed and black and blue. And I’m alone in this apartment.

I need ice, he thinks inanely.

_That bruise is going to need more than ice, Jason._

His breath hitches in his throat, and from the way he turns around looking for the source of the phantom voice you’d think he lost his mind.

 _Are you sure you haven’t? I think you have. You’re craaaaaaazy, Jason. Homesick and  crazy._  
       You were so quick to snap. Putting a bandage on  _this, on you, is going to fix jack  shit, hermano._  
      _You’re fucked._

Jason grabs his head, fingers curling in his hair, and he stumbles back against the wall. The wall that Vaas was leaning against only seconds ago.

“I killed you. I saw you die.” He wants to scream but his voice comes out ragged and weak.

_I don’t know, Jason. How sure are you?_

“Pretty fucking sure,” he manages to choke out. He wishes there was aspirin within arms reach; the pounding is getting worse.

        _But you’re talking to me right now. What is it you Americans think all us pirates say?  
       Dead  men tell no tales? If I’m a dead man I shouldn’t be _ _telling any tales, you think?_

“I stabbed you. I stabbed you with that knife. I—”

 _You this, you that, you did a lot of things, Jason. But I’m beginning to get the impression  you’re starting to doubt yourself.  
        Are you doubting _ _yourself? A warrior doesn’t doubt  themselves, oh no no no. Not at all. I think you’re going to hit the ground again._

He has his eyes clenched shut and he’s trying to force the voice out of his head. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real. It’s not fucking real.

_Really, hermano, I think you need to hit the ground again. You lost yourself in this city and I_   
_think you need the ground hard. Don’t you remember everything I taught you? Let me  he—_

“Jason? Is that you?”

He forces his eyes open, finding himself on the washroom floor and someone is calling his name but his head is swimming and continuing to sit there feels better than exerting any effort. The light is too much and he shields his eyes with his hand, blinking. His head throbs a steady beat in his temples, and he doesn’t know how much time has passed or if any time has passed at all.

The red-tinged washcloth stares back at him from the sink.

There’s the sound of footsteps down the hallway and then a gasp.

“Jason!”

Liza is looking at him like he’s been run through a meat grinder. He stares at the smudge of lipstick on her face.

“Oh my god. What happened? Are you okay?”

He swallows thickly, his mouth is dry, but he manages to force out, “I’m fine. Fine. Just—” He shakes his head. He needs it clear, focused, like how he felt after the fight, but not this. He doesn’t need this fog again. “—Got into a bar fight.” He can feel Liza’s hand pulling away from where it was inspecting the cut on his lip.

“A bar fight?” She sounds incredulous, erring on the edge of disapproval.

“Yeah.”

“You were in a bar fight?” she asks again, sounding upset.

“Keith texted me after the group thing.” He waves a hand in a vague gesture then rubs at his eyes. I need ice, he thinks again and starts to push himself to his feet. He’s unsteady, nearly falls but he can feel Liza’s hands around him, helping him up. Shame begins to mingle with the confusion and fear and he wishes he hadn’t moved at all. “Asked me if I wanted to meet and I said sure. There were just some assholes at the bar. It’s nothing.”

“Nothing? Jason, look at me.” Both of her palms are placed on his cheeks but he’s looking past her, into the hallway, expecting to see someone in red standing there with a mocking grin. “I mean it. Look at me.”

He meets her eyes reluctantly.

“Are you okay?” He knows what she’s asking. Are you this, are you that, do you feel like taking a stapler and bashing it over Chatty Cathy’s head at work? Do you still feel angry, Jason? Do you still feel the need to be violent, Jason? You need to be okay, Jason. We all need you to be okay.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” He smiles and hopes she can’t see how it wavers on his lips. “Really.”

She’s silent for a moment, staring at him, judging him, but it’s hard to judge someone you can’t understand, he thinks ( he hopes ).

Whether he passes that test he isn’t sure. All she says is, “Come on. You need some ice.”

* * *

The ice stings and he winces. Seated across from Liza in the kitchen, he holds up a pack of frozen peas to his face. Apparently it never occurred to her to buy an ice pack along with the first aid kit. His head still isn’t as clear as he’d like it to be and he’s dragging, the crash leaving him feeling bedraggled and rundown. He’s back where he started when he woke up this morning except now he has a splitting headache and a nagging girlfriend to go along with it.

_Poor little white boy is nothing without the rush._

He has to force back a sneer and keep his lips clamped shut. You can’t hold conversations with dead men when the living was around.

“—and all you did was bump into the guy?”

“Yeah. Like I said, he was an asshole.”

She lapses into a silence, eyebrows pulled together like she’s considering his story, and Jason is one-part grateful for it and two-parts afraid Vaas will take pick this particular moment to show up again.

He doesn’t think Liza was ever fully convinced that he was glad to come back home and he’s starting to think he wasn’t all that glad either.

Hey, everyone makes mistakes, right?

He wonders if he can find Rook Island on a map.

“How did it ... make you feel?” The question comes out stumbling and laced with hesitance, and it takes a moment for the words to register with him. “Jason?” He looks at her and stops shooting quick glances over her shoulder. Liza looks nervous, like she’s trying to defuse a bomb but doesn’t know which wire to pull.

She should be nervous. There might be a dead man in their apartment.

Jason shifts a little in the chair and eases up the cold peas against his eye. It’s a loaded question. No matter his answer, it will still be the wrong one. “I don’t know. It was a fight. It was nothing.”

It’s a weak evasion but he’s too shaken up to care.

“Be honest with me. Please.” Her hand reaches over to grasp his and he stares down at their twined together fingers. She doesn’t get it, he reminds himself. “I”m worried about you. You’ve been ... different lately.”

He chokes back a derisive laugh. Lately? he wants to say, I’ve been different since the moment Dennis put a gun in my hand. “I am being honest with you, Liza. It was just a bar fight. If you’re asking whether or not I felt good beating him up you can stop. I can’t get over something—” And he uses mental quotations at that. “If everyone thinks I’m stuck in past.”

_But you are._

Fuck you, he almost says and fights the urge to look over his shoulder to see if Vaas was standing there. “If there was something wrong I’d let you know.”

_No, you wouldn’t._

Liza looks a mixture of worried and aggravated, and a diluted version of the guilt he felt the other day begins to crawl through his veins to his heart. He might have come off as a bit too harsh. He puts the frozen peas down and presses down on the bruise.

Cold and painful.

“How was the support group?” She changes the topic and Jason is happy to comply. He hefts his shoulders in a shrug.

“Fine. Kind of weird.” At least that was the truth. “But I could get used to it. There’s some, uh, nice people.” Maybe too nice. He can’t wrap his mind around the vulnerability shown in those places.

“So you’ll go back?”

He picks up the frozen peas again and says, “Yeah. I don’t see why not.”

He really doesn't want to.

It seems to brighten her up a bit but Jason still gets the impression she’s waiting for him to trip up. Maybe she’s been waiting for him to trip up for six months.

She gets up instead of questioning him more, plants a kiss on his forehead and says she’s going to take a shower and that he should get to bed. It’s the minute she leaves that he lets the peas drop on the table and looks over his shoulder. He’s met with the sink and dirty dishes that need washing and nothing else.

It’s just him in the kitchen. Alone.

His heart pounds in his chest anyway.

He puts the peas back in the freezer and heads to bed but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s still being watched.

* * *

The bruise around his eye matches his tie. It brings out the colour of his eyes.

Nobody at the office asks him what happened.

* * *

“Dude, if you don’t hit me I’ll call Ollie and chances are he’s high enough to give it a shot. Just do it.”

“I’m not hitting you, Jason. That’s crazy. _This_ is crazy.”

This is crazy, sure, yeah, he won’t deny it, but this is what he needs. He crashed too hard and he needs that high again. It’s so close. He never thought he’d have it within his grasp again, especially not here in this concrete jungle. His eye was still black and blue and the cut on his lip still wasn’t healed but so what? There was no time to heal on Rook Island either.

“Hit me.” Lackadaisical.

“No.” Insistent.

They met up after their groups. Jason went, reluctantly, when Liza offered to walk him to the community centre. She left him outside the door with a kiss on his cheek and a reassuring smile. It was coincidence that when he was exiting the building two long hours later that Keith had spotted him.

Drinks seemed appropriate. Especially after two hours of sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair in a circle with a bunch of people he didn’t know, who expected him to open up his heart and let himself heal.

What a bunch of bullshit.

“Keith.”

“Dude, I already said no.”

They had a beer or two, chatted mindlessly ( what else is there to talk about anymore? ), forced laughter and smiles. It felt robotic, and he was certain Keith had to feel the same way. He had to. Over the course of his second beer, he began to wonder if a fight would help Keith.

_Selfish, Jason. Do you really care to know if it’ll help him?_

That’s how he ended up out here, in the parking lot with Keith.

“Think of it as a favour to a friend.”

“What the fuck kind of favour is punching you in the face?”

Keith really wasn’t interested.

“A really good one. Just do this for me, will you?” Jason prompts Keith with his hands. “Come on.”

“How many times do I have to sa—” _Just do it already, hermano, you know you want to._ Jason slams his fist into the side of Keith’s face, impatience and desire getting the better of him.

_See? You remember how easy it is to just give in? Let yourself fall, hit the ground, you  remember how it goes._

Anger flares up on Keith’s face like a match hitting gasoline. “What the hell, man?”

Jason’s response is to throw another punch, his other fist aimed for the other side of his face. Keith sees it coming, dodges out of the way — then he’s laying one on Jason. Right into his cheekbone and motherfucker, does it hurt good. Jason stumbles backwards but steadies himself, and sees exasperation written all over Keith’s face. Frustration is good. Frustration means he just might keep fighting.

Jason rubs at the sting on his cheek while a tense moment of silence fills the air between them. A small grin forms on his lips and he tries to bite it back. Swallow the exhilaration. Keith has a fist clenched at his side.

Then Jason’s stepping forward, aiming to return Keith’s hit with one of his own.

_Snow White’s found his own little drug now, huh?_

He would said that yeah, he has found his own drug if Keith’s anger wasn’t making him laugh in between punches.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Jason uncurls his fist from the fabric of Keith’s shirt, takes a step back, breathing hard. His knuckles hurt.

“Nothing,” He rubs at his aching jaw, glances around the parking lot. They’re the only two around. Maybe not anymore anyway, he wants to say, I might have this figured out. “Fucking nothing. It’s everyone else who’s got it all wrong.”

Even to his own ears, it doesn't sound like he's making any sense.

“—you want to stop feeling so vulnerable, Keith? Then hit me. Fight me.”

The whispering voice of his conscience tells him that maybe this is a little bit manipulative, playing on someone else’s weakness for his own gain, but he shuts the thought behind lock and key. Keith needs this as much as he does, he assures himself. The only difference was that Keith didn’t know it yet.

Keith looks fed up and Jason is afraid he’s going to lose him. “You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”

“I’m not crazy.” _You’re starting to sound like me, hermano._ “I need this. So do you.” Frustration digs into the edges of his words. “That night, when I got into that bar fight? It made me feel better, man. Better than sitting in some circle talking about bullshit like any of it matters.”

It feels like he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place.

There’s no way for him to get Keith to understand unless they fucking fight. Come on, Ramsay, just give in. Let yourself drop.

“Take it all back, man. You can take back everything you lost on that island. Just fucking hit me. It feels good to let it all go.”

Keith’s eyes deaden, a surprising feat considering the constant dull look. “Daisy told me, you know. She told everyone what you said to her.”

Jason doesn’t have to ask to know what he’s referring to. God-fucking-damn-it. Killing feels like winning — it sure fucking does. He won’t take it back, won’t deny it, but now he’s stumbling over words.

_Don’t lose him, Jason._

He does what seems like the only logical option: he throws an uppercut to Keith’s jaw before he can realize what’s happening. Keith’s head snaps back, his jaw clenching together with the impact. It isn’t the hardest hit he’s ever doled out, but Jason knows that it’s gotta hurt like a sonuva bitch.

Finally, _finally_ , Keith retaliates for real. Jason yells out because the hit lands on his still aching nose, but it’s good, yeah, this is exactly what he wants. The pain and the adrenaline, and the next hit catches him in the gut and he feels alive.

Jason reaches out, grabs the fabric of Keith’s shirt again, and they’re grappling with each other, yanking each other around the parking lot. Keith tries to use his obvious size advantage, but Jason knows one too many tricks. He sweeps Keith’s leg out from under him and shoves him backwards, sending him crashing against the cement wall of the bar. Jason ends up with a fist slamming into the side of his ribs, and Keith uses the moment to shove Jason off and throw another punch.

Jason tries to duck, fails, and for the brief moment he can think he wonders if he let himself slip up on purpose.

        _Probably._

Jason’s grinning again, ear to ear, and only a blind person would miss out on the fact that he’s enjoying this like a kid on a carnival ride.

He throws a punch aimed at Keith’s side and manages to say, “This is better therapy than those support groups.” Keith is knocked sideways, wincing and catches himself on the hood of someone’s car. Silence descends on the both of them again. This time it isn’t as tense.

“Shit,” is all he says.

That’s when Jason knows he has him.

“You’re right.”

“I know.”

Whatever thoughts were churning through Keith’s mind, Jason didn’t know and didn’t care. The only thing that matters is that blood is dripping down his face and the tangy smell of salt in the air.

The ocean rushing through his veins settles. Vaas whispers, " _Hit him again_."

So he does, and this time, he thinks, Keith is enjoying himself.

* * *

They meet next Thursday for beers again.

They fight, drunkenly, in the parking lot.

They attract attention.

That’s when Fight Club starts.


	4. prove you're alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow sorry for the delay! i meant to have two chapters out by now but finals + a one week summer course bit me in the ass real hard. i had a bit of trouble writing this chapter too and i hope it's still alright. aaaaaa. 
> 
> i hope you enjoy it!!
> 
> (p.s. i'm going on vacation wednesday and i won't be back until the 19th so there won't be an update after that gomen gomen)

Fight club starts in the parking lot of the Rollin’ Rock by accident. 

“These guys are really into this,” Keith says on the first official night, leaning against the hood of a stranger’s car with a beer in one hand. He looks to Jason. “We’re not the only ones.” Jason nods because he knows these guys need what he need; these guys need a fight.  

And it _was_ an accident; Jason never meant to form a club, but that’s what they were calling it now and who was he to say anything against it? Really, he likes the idea, and it might be because it reminds him of the way the Rakyat deferred to him because all these guys hang on every word that comes out of his lips, but he would never say that out loud.   

(There’s an unspoken rule between him and Keith now to never talk about the island.)

That night - two weeks ago - Keith and Jason hadn’t even realized they’d drawn a crowd of half-drunk, confused patrons until one of them eventually called out, “What the fuck are you boys doing?” 

They broke apart and Jason had blood dripping out of his nose and Keith’s lip was all busted up; neither of them were a pretty sight but both of them looked happy about it. They stood underneath a grimy streetlight and Jason wiped blood off his face with the back of his hand.

Keith looked to Jason, Jason looked at Keith and rubbed his sore jaw. “Fighting.” 

“Yeah, I can see that, kid, but _why_?” The look of confusion on their faces almost made Jason laugh. 

Jason shrugged, spat blood out onto the concrete and saw no reason to go into the details. “Because.” 

The guys looked between each other and then one of them stepped forward. “I want a turn.” 

Jason grinned.

Fight club ends up meeting in the basement of the Rollin’ Rock every Thursday night.  

It’s week three and two guys are going at it like they’re releasing a lifetime of lost dreams, expectations and vulnerability. There’s blood on the concrete floor and one of them gets hit so hard you can hear his nose break and he’s shouting _STOP_ through the blood flowing out of his mouth. 

That’s one of the rules of fight club: if someone taps out or yells stop, the fight is over.  

Yeah, there were rules - Keith’s idea after someone asked if there were any. Keith gave Jason a sideways glance and spoke up before he had the opportunity to say, “Who cares? Just go at it.”  

Keith must know he still craves the man he had become on the island.  

They were Keith’s rules but Jason gave them every week. 

He gets under the light in the middle of the damp basement and the men crowd around him like he’s their messiah. He runs through the rules: two men to a fight, one fight at a time, no shoes no shirts, fights go on as long as they have to.  

Don’t talk about fight club. That’s the most important rule, he tells them. 

Same rules every week, same men hanging off his every word. They nod their agreement while rings are being shoved into pockets and ties are being tossed to the floor. 

The feeling was almost as good as how you felt after a fight. 

“And the seventh rule,” Jason yells each week, “is if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.”

Jason tags one of the new guys tonight - a nervous looking, twenty-something fucking _barista_ named William who looks like he could be tossed around like a rag doll. The kid was all arms and lanky legs with a fringe of hair covering his eyes, and Jason wonders what his story is. 

The blood from the previous fight has been wiped off the cardboard that acted as buffer from the concrete floor but there’s a dark stain on it reminding Jason - reminding everyone, Jason hopes - that you’re never more alive anywhere than you are at fight club. Jason rolls a shoulder and cracks his knuckles. There’s a lot of noise at fight club, a lot of yelling, a lot of shouting, but when the fight begins it becomes a blur. The sound reminds Jason of the ocean during a storm, rough and angry and alive, and the taste of copper that fills his mouth reminds him of it too. It becomes his zone, even outside fight club, like those bullshit places they told you to mentally travel to at support groups. A place of serenity even when you’ve been hit so hard you bite the inside of your cheek and blood fills your mouth like a flood. There’s no time to spit out the blood so he swallows it.

A voice in his head reminds me that you can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick.

Thankfully, it’s his own voice.  

The kid must have had a rough week; in contrast to Jason’s grinning face, his own is brimming with rage. As if Jason has been replaced with the thing or the person or the whatever that he’s too afraid to fight outside of this grimy basement. A lot of these guys, he learns, are afraid of something. After a couple fights, they’re afraid a lot less. There’s nothing they can’t handle.

Jason eggs him on, dodging a punch aimed for his cheek. He dances around the kid, swings his fist into his ribs and sends him stumbling backwards. 

He takes the free moment to spit out a wad of blood and wipe it from his lips. The kid’s bleeding too - there’s blood dripping onto the concrete from his nose, onto the spot that had just been cleaned up, but he doesn’t wipe the blood away from his face. There’s a familiar look in his eyes that Jason recognizes as blood lust and the thirst of power. The kid’s let himself give into the feeling and Jason has a brief second to feel a rush of accomplishment before there’s nothing left but the feeling of fists connecting with flesh and the sounds of the ocean in his ears. 

The kid - Barista Bill, Jason names him - rushes him, his eyes an angry shade of green and Jason wants to say _yes, yes, you’re getting it_ but a fist connects with his ribs and he trips over himself, landing hard on the floor, the side of his face connecting with it. It’s not a second later that Barista Bill has a fistful of Jason’s hair and forces his head to connect with flimsy cardboard. Jason sees stars and they look an awful lot like the ones he was so familiar with on Rook Island. His head connects with the floor again, he feels blood rushing down his face, into his eye, and he says _stop, stop_.   

A hand disconnects from his hair, he pushes himself up to a seated position, spits out more blood, touches the cut above his eye. His fingers come back red and wet with blood. 

 _You’re going to need stitches, Jason._  

“I know,” he says the moment after Keith calls out, “You look like hell, J.” and he isn’t sure who he’s answering. 

The kid offers him a hand up, there’s a spark of something new in his eyes. Life, maybe. They shake with blood covered hands and Barista Bill says, “Same time next week?” Jason laughs, doesn’t wince when the action sends a shooting pain through his ribs.

“Why not?” 

The floor’s being prepped for the next fight and Keith hands Jason a hand towel for the bleeding.

“Hospital?” Keith asks. 

“Hospital,” Jason agrees. A needle and old thread doesn’t cut it here like it does on the island.  

* * *

At the hospital, the nurse asks Jason what happened while she’s prepping him.

“Uh-” 

_You fell down the stairs, hermano._

“I fell down the stairs.” The nurse gives him a look, Jason shrugs as if to say _Hey, shit happens_ and tries to pretend like the excuse was his own. For a couple days after Vaas _showed up_ in his washroom, Jason spent more time looking over his shoulder than doing anything else. Liza noticed how jumpy he was, asked what was wrong and Jason brushed her off because you can’t explain to someone you saw a dead man in your washroom. The paranoia waned with the inception of fight club - whether or not the two events were related he didn’t really care. 

But this wasn’t the first time he caught himself slipping up, answering Vaas out loud or speaking with Vaas’ words. It happened twice in the past week. He should have been more concerned, should have asked himself what the fuck he was doing, but the moments came and went too quick to notice until it was over. 

“The doctor will be right with you.” 

“Yeah, alright.”  

Jason figures that code for, “We’re going to keep you waiting,” because time ticks by and he’s spent half an hour bleeding and watching the clock. He hops off the table, a map of the world drawing his attention. His eyes trail down to Bangkok and he wonders if any of the tiny dots in the body of water underneath the city is Rook Island, or if it’s even on the map at all. 

It’s probably not. 

“I’ll find you,” he mutters to the empty room, tapping the ocean with a finger. 

He dreamt about the island last night. In his dream, he was king; a crown of palm leaves and bullet fragments strung together with branches and wire, all sharp edges underneath the unsuspecting green. When he woke, he groped blindly in the dark for it until a car alarm began to blare and he noticed the tangle of bedsheets at his feet. He was in his room, in Los Angeles, not the island.  

_Oh well_ , he told himself, _at least I can sleep now_. And he can; he doesn't wake up in a cold sweat anymore wondering why there isn't sand underneath him and a starry sky above him. Why there isn't a machete or a gun within hands reach. The eyebags have been replaced with bruises but he likes it better this way. The pain reminds him that he's alive after all. 

He runs a hand through his messy hair, untangling the stands stuck together and sticky with blood - his blood or someone else’s he didn’t know, didn’t care - and lets out a breath. 

_“Making plans for a trip home, Jason?”_  

At first, he thinks it’s the doctor, only because that makes sense, that’s logical, that’s rational. Except doctors don’t wear machetes slung from their hip and when he turns around that’s the sight he’s greeted to. There’s a ring of blue around Vaas’ eye, his lip is cut; Jason, for a split second, wonders if he has a fight club of his own then he remembers that no, no, no, no, Vaas is dead. 

He’s seeing things.

Again. 

A sharp pain shoots through his head and he grits his teeth against it. 

_“You don’t look too happy to see me. I’m hurt.”_

Jason closes his eyes, envisions the ocean and the sand and counts to ten because when he opens his eyes Vaas is going to be gone because Jason has control over this. Right? 

Wrong. 

Jason opens his eyes and they’re met with green ones staring back at him, inches from his face. 

“SHIT!” Jason stumbles out of the way, finds grip on a table filled with metal, sharp looking objects and stops himself from falling to his knees. Vaas chuckles and Jason feels powerless.

_“I didn’t mean to scare you. I just came here to say that I really like your new look. I do. Black and blue really brings out the green of your eyes.”_ Vaas steps toward Jason again and Jason is leaning against the table. Vaas smells like salt and copper and he looks fucking _tangible_ and it makes Jason’s head spin.  

“You’re dead. I killed you,” he says as if those words would cause the pirate to disappear in a puff of smoke - just like he had hoped they would last time. 

_“Yes, yes, I know, we went through this last time, didn’t we?”_ Vaas reaches around Jason, picking up a scalpel from the table and twirls it in his fingers, a taunting look to his eyes. _“But if I’m dead, then so are you.”_ The pirate pokes Jason in the chest with the edge of the scalpel and spins on his heels, hops up on the exam table and suddenly Jason can breathe but Vaas’ words are a jumble in his head. 

_“What’s a matter, Snow White? You don’t like visits from old friends?”_ Jason opens his mouth to reply against the harsh whispering of logic telling him he’s fucking crazy but Vaas holds up a hand. _“No, no, no, shhh, I’m talking. I’m not just here to comment on your new look. I’m proud of you, Jason, really. I was honestly beginning to think that you’d forgotten everything I taught you, but this fight club - that’s what you’re calling it, right? Yeah, yeah, this fight club you have going on is good. It’ll keep you in tip top shape.”_

He stares dumbly at Vaas - half of him beginning to doubt that the pirate was dead and the other urging him to recall the event two weeks ago. _It’s all in your head, he’s all in your head_ , the voice says but it fades and he’s left with a silence. 

_“You’re supposed to ask me for what.”_

“...For what?” He tries to remind himself again that Vaas is dead but the pirate nicks himself on the scalpel and a drop of blood falls onto the floor. 

_“Too hesitant, hermano._ ” He pockets the scalpel, wipes the blood off on his pants and hops off the table. _“You’ll figure it out yourself.”_ Vaas’ laugh borders on a fucking giggle and he pats Jason on the cheek. _“Good talk, Jason. Keep it up.”_  

And just like that he leaves the room and the doctor enters seconds later. The doctor looks at him with an expression that says, “What the fuck are you doing?” but asks him to take a seat on the exam table instead. 

Jason fails to notice the drop blood on the floor isn’t there anymore. The doctor’s talking to him but he’s too lost trying to make sense of what happened. 

“But Vaas is dead,” he says firmly and a sharp pain shoots through his head as if in disagreement. 

“Excuse me?” 

Jason blinks, eyes focusing on the doctor and he realizes he’s spoken out loud. I need another fucking fight, he thinks. “Nothing.” The doctor’s lips press together firmly and a frown tugs his lips down.  

“The nurse told me you fell down some stairs.”

“That’s right.” 

“You’re face looks pretty beaten up for that.”  

“They were cement stairs,” he says but he wants to say _I’ve looked worse, this is nothing_. The doctor shakes his head, preps the anesthetic and tells Jason the needle is going to sting for a second. 

It does but barely; the sting of the needle is blunted by the sting in his ribs every time he shifts. The doctor turns away, the cut freezes and he hates how he can’t feel the pain. The pain was real, it was tangible; the pain wasn’t a dead man with a scalpel in his hand who may or may not be dead. 

He doesn’t feel the needle pierce his skin nor the thread being pulled through. Jason looks at the posters up on the wall behind the doctor in an effort to ignore the rushing in his head. 

_Get at least thirty minutes of exercise a day!_  

_Don’t forget about your yearly checkups!_

Even one with the tacky saying: _An apple a day keeps the doctor away!_

Jason sneers, his head throbs and thinks about how he’s going to have to stay up all night in case he has a concussion. The doctor tells him stay still unless he wants the stitches to rip and Jason almost says, “Maybe I do. I’d like the scar,” but keeps his mouth shut. 

He collects scars and bruises like people collect stamps and coins now. Every scar, scrape, bruise and cut was a badge of honour; he’d earned them and he’d teach each of those men he met every week what it meant to wear them with pride.

He’d make warriors out of them.

The doctor finishes in less time than he spent staring at the wall. “Thanks,” he mutters when it’s over and the doctor is telling him to make sure to not touch it, wishing the anesthetic would wear off. 

He chews on his cut lip and meets Keith out in the waiting room, spying two other guys from fight club sitting separately in the room. Jason could offer them a nod, a wave, a something, but it would be the same as acknowledging strangers. Outside of fight club, you were a whole different person - the bruises and busted lips were the only signs that you might be growing into someone else. 

That’s what Jason tries to focus on as Keith drives him back to his apartment. His mind replays the events in the hospital room; Vaas’ laughter, the scalpel twirling in his fingers, the _encouragement_ he gave Jason. Jason has long since accepted that nearly everything Vaas told him was true - the pirate was right, Jason understood that now - but encouragement from the lips of the man himself was a whole other thing.

Especially when that man was dead and he was beginning to doubt the fact. He tries to remember the moment he killed Vaas but it comes back a static blur of blue and black, taunting voices, and the smell of gunpowder.  

He shifts, looks out the window, watches the world go by in a blur before turning to Keith. “You want to fight?” The itch for another one crawls under his skin and creeps into his veins. 

Keith laughs, shoots a look at Jason’s bruised face. “No offense but that kid wrecked you tonight. Liza’s going to have your head just for that. I don’t need her taking mine for adding to the bruises.” 

Jason frowns and Keith adds, “What are you even telling her?” 

“I’m not,” he says. Liza kept asking and Jason kept shutting her down. Just bar fights with assholes, he’d say, but coming home like this for the third week in a row was going to get him more than insistent questions. Planning things through was a skill he still had yet to gain apparently. “First rule of fight club, remember?" 

(Unless, of course, the planning involved trying to figure out how to kill six men without anyone noticing.) 

“Yeah and every week it’s broken a little bit more in case you haven’t noticed. Don’t fuck this up, Jason. You need her.” Jason hears the implication in his voice and an anger bubbles up in his chest.

“The only person I need is myself,” he snaps and a silence falls between them.

_And me. You need me, Jason._

They don’t speak the rest of the way home. 

* * *

There’s the sound of muffled voices coming from the other side of the door. The key is in the lock but he doesn’t turn it. He only catches words and snippets of sentences.

“...bruises... I think something might be...” He recognizes the first voice as Liza. The tone in her voice is a mixture of anger and distress.

“...haven’t spoken to...” A minute passes before he recognizes the second voice as Riley and fuck he hasn’t spoken to Riley in weeks - not since the fight club started. _Way to be a shit brother,_ he tells himself.

He debates turning and leaving, going for a run maybe, the clothes he’s wearing would work fine but footsteps head towards the door and there’s no way he could get out of this. 

He twists the key in the lock. He opens the door. The expressions on Riley and Liza’s faces betray everything. 

“Jason, hey.” Riley looks like a deer-in-headlights, if not shaken by Jason’s appearance. “I came by to see if you wanted to hang but Liza said you were out and...” 

He was never that good a liar. 

Liza steps forward, brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “We need to talk, Jason.” Jason lets out a breath, closes his eyes. The tone in her voice  sounds like a psychologist starting an intervention. He chews the inside of his cheek, the spot he bit into during the fight and it stings. “We’re worried about you.” 

Jason steels himself for a speech ripped straight from that reality show about interventions.

“Something’s changed about you,” she says. “And you keep coming home with all these-” 

_Aw, they’re worried about you, Snow White_. _But they shouldn’t be. You know that._

“I can’t talk about it,” he says, cutting her off. Her eyebrows knit together in confusion, in hurt and he doesn’t feel as bad about it as he thinks he probably should. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that after a fight everything had the volume turned down. After a fight, you could deal with anything.  

Liza and Riley trade looks and Riley speaks up, “Look. Why don’t we go grab a beer or something? We can talk about whatever, yeah?” This he does feel bad about. He promised Riley he’d be there for him and he gives him up for to be in a fight once a week. 

“Yeah, sure. I need a drink anyway.” Maybe Riley would understand. Maybe Riley needs it as much as he and Keith does.

Riley grabs his jacket, Liza looks hopeful, Jason feels trapped and Vaas says _he won’t understand you, hermano, you know that_. 


	5. maybe we have to break everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit. it's only been about ten million years since i updated this. 
> 
> okay, maybe a slight exaggeration but you know. 
> 
> anyway, i'm still alive and so is this fic. i'm just obnoxiously slow. i'm rly gomen about that. u_u
> 
> enjoy it xoxo

He cradles the beer between his hands, his eyes flicking flatly around the bar. It isn’t a bar he feels entirely comfortable in; it’s filled with frat boys and sorority girls who’ve never experienced anything but their upper-class lives. Bringing the beer to his lips, he swirls the amber liquid around in his mouth and swallows - but the taste of iron remains.

“Jason, what happened to you?”

Jason drags his gaze back to his brother and a small wave of guilt swells in his chest. Avoiding Liza was one thing but this was Riley - the little brother he vowed to protect, to be there for when he called at three in the morning with a tremble in his voice, awoken by nightmares and flashbacks. 

Yeah, he was doing a great job at being the older brother. Grant would be (probably was) ashamed. 

He takes another pull of his beer, tossing around what excuses floated around his mind. 

Riley takes Jason’s silence as a cue to continue. “You’re distant, man.” A frown creases his lips, a mixture _i want to know and i’m not sure i want to know_ in his eyes. “And those the bruises you’re sporting. What are you, getting into fights or something?” 

Jason leans back, itches for a cigarette and wonders why. He doesn’t smoke. Riley’s eyes bore into Jason, slowly ripping a hole through the wall he’s built up around himself. The music coming from the tinny speakers beats irritatingly around him. Jason licks his lips, tastes blood and beer, and leans forward, his voice dropping. 

“It’s difficult to explain,” he starts, wondering why he’s speaking at all. Vaas’ voice reminds him that Riley won’t understand - just like the rest of them wouldn’t understand. Vaas’ voice reminds him that Riley was a captive, tortured by his own brother no less. Riley wasn’t looking for a cheap imitation rush; Riley was looking for comfort, safety. He tongues the scab in his cheek. “This-” Jason gestures vaguely to their surroundings. “This doesn’t cut it anymore.”  

Jason hates hates how the honesty tastes as it spills past his lips.

“I changed back there. I’m not the same guy anymore.” Jason doesn’t miss the shift in Riley’s eyes - the way they seem to hollow out, darken, how he leans back. Vaas snickers in his ear and Jason curls his fingers tightly around his glass. “I need--... A thrill, a rush. Something tangible, something--” 

Riley cuts him off and Jason realizes there are no words to explain what he needs. “So what? You start fights to get your adrenaline going? Is that it? That sounds insane.” 

“That’s not it, Riley. Ever since I got back, I haven’t felt the same. I feel like I died on that island. I need to do something that proves I’m still breathing.” 

It sounds crazy out loud, he realizes.  

(He cares but he wishes he cared more.)

Riley looks borderline nauseated. “You know, Daisy told me what you said to her - that killing feels like winning.” His voice is flat now; Jason isn’t sure if Riley is trying to mask the emotion he can feel wavering under his words or not. “This is almost as fucked up as that.”

_I told you so_ , Vaas whispers, a cruel mockery in his tone, taking glee in the rift opening between the brothers.

Jason ignores Vaas, but at his core knows the pirate is right. Like fucking usual. “That-- no. Riley, that was different.” _Are you so certain about that?_ “I’m not killing people here.” That earns him a strange look from the two girls sitting at the table across them; he shoots them a glare, turns back to Riley. “I’m telling you. This is more about living.” 

Riley shakes his head, doesn’t understand, doesn’t get it; Jason wants to scream but instead says, “You were there. I know you felt it - when we were in the helicopter? That feeling. That’s what I need, that’s what I have now with the fights. Maybe if you came one night, you’d understand, you’d get it.” There’s a hint of pleading in his voice, a desperation for his brother, his _family_ , to understand what he means. The rules he and Keith decided on are quickly and suddenly forgotten, and he’ll be ashamed about it later. “It’s once a week. At the bar a couple blocks from my place. You--” 

“No.” Riley shakes his head, still looking nauseated. “No, thanks. When you ... When you had to torture me? For show? Did you feel ‘alive’ then, too, J?”

Jason slams his fist on the table before he really has a moment to process what he’s doing. Riley flinches subtly; Jason doesn’t notice. Desperation clouds observation. “No! Don’t pull that on me, Riley. That made me feel nothing but disgusting, but it was the only way we were going to get out of there alive. You know that. I know you know that.” 

Riley downs the rest of his beer, stands up, and slams a twenty down on the table. “I’m not so sure anymore. Your act was pretty convincing.” There’s a slight shake to his hand, and still Jason fails to notice it. He leaves Jason alone with his unfinished beer and a sick feeling twisting around in his gut. His head feels heavy and there’s an itching in his skin. The two girls glance over at him again as he gets up to leave, too; he sneers at them, wishing everyone would leave him the fuck alone. 

Outside, the night air is crisp - strange for L.A - and it leaves him wanting, craving for the warm breeze of Rook Island and the smell of salt in the air. Jason leans against the outside wall, closes his eyes and tries to envision it. It’s muddled and cloudy, and he’s _frustrated_ ; he wants the island, not this, no, not anymore. He pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs at his eyes, ignores the dull ache in his body.

_It’s a hop, skip, and a jump over the ocean, hermano. You know how to get there. You could leave now; in fact, you_ should _leave now. No one can stop you._

Eyes still pinched shut, he tries to ignore Vaas, fists closing and opening. Guilt washes over him, sits heavily on his shoulders, and he hates himself for fucking this up with Riley and hates himself more for not bothering to go after him. 

He wonders if Riley will go to Liza and tell her about how fucked up her boyfriend is. He wonders if he should bother going home tonight. He wonders what he should do, and he wonders if he should do anything at all. He wonders and wonders and wonders. 

“ _Forget about home. That isn’t your home anyway. Your home is thousands of miles away from here. Your_ real _ho--”_

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Jason snarls. Vaas is leaning against the wall beside him, a cigarette dangling between his lips, and grins. Jason fights against the urge to throw a punch at him and tries to ignore the feeling of dissociation, the sudden wave of dizziness. “I’m trying to fucking think.”

“ _That, my friend, is your problem. You think too much, Snow White. Spend less time thinking; spend more time doing, living.”_ Jason sneers, doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a response, and pinches the bridge of his nose again before stalking off because he knows it _is_ good advice, and hates that. Vaas steps off the sidewalk, walks beside Jason on the road. “ _How many times do I have to tell you that these people are no good for you now? This isn’t your life anymore._ _For a while there, I thought I had really gotten to you. I thought I taught you.”_  

Vaas holds out his half-smoked cigarette to Jason. Jason shoves his hand away, earns a strange look from a passerby. “I don’t smoke.” 

“ _Are you sure about that?_ ” 

“Ask me if I’m sure about something one more fucking time and I’m going to smash your head against a concrete wall.” But he does want a one, craves the nicotine and glances at the cigarette from the corner of his eyes.

Vaas doesn’t respond, only snickers. He takes a drag and blows the smoke from the corner of his lips.   

* * *

They end up outside a rundown motel named The Paper Street Motel. The neon sign in the office window is burning out and reads: _acancy avalble._ Jason isn’t too sure how they got here but there’s a sense of familiarity in the way the lights flicker and in the sound of white noise that comes from one of the rooms. The air smells like an old steel plant and cigarettes. He coughs. 

“This is my stop, hermano.” Vaas flicks his second cigarette to the ground, crushes it underneath his boot. Jason’s head spins, tries to push away the feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with where he is and who he’s with. 

Vaas turns his back, heads toward room number ten, but before he enters, spins around on his heels and spreads his arms. “Feel free to visit anytime you like.” 

Jason stands there for five minutes (he thinks; it might have been twenty, it might have been two), his hand gripping the light post beside him and pretends like he doesn’t need it to keep himself upright. 

The lights in the room flick off. Then, he goes home.

* * *

Home is dark and silent, with a note tacked on the door to the bedroom. It reads: _you can sleep on the couch tonight._  

Jason crumples it up in his hand, curses Riley for being loyal, curses himself for cursing his brother. Shoving the note in his pocket, he goes to the washroom and grabs the bottle of aspirin sitting on the sink. There’s still a washcloth stained red sitting on the edge of the sink. He wrinkles his nose and tosses it in the trash. Shaking out two of the small while pills, he swallows them dry. Honestly, he was surprised that it took this long for Liza to say something - or at least, _do_ something even if it was indirectly. 

It isn’t like her, he thinks, and Jason wonders if she’s afraid of him now. He suspects it’s only a matter of time until she leaves or he’s left without a place to sleep at night.   

For now though, he wants Rook Island. He falls asleep on the couch, his arm acting as the de-facto pillow and dreams about being king. 

* * *

At work, he’s supposed to give a presentation to some pompous suits from corporate. But he’s got a black eye, bruises, and stitches above his eye, and his boss tells him there’s no way he can give a presentation looking like a thug. 

“What happened to you now, Brody? You’re a mess.” 

“I fell down some stairs,” he says. “Had a bit of a klutz moment.” His boss shakes his head and mutters something about the youth of today. He follows his boss into the meeting room. 

Jason takes a seat in the back corner. The lights are flicked off and Jason tunes out, pretends to be interested but thinks about when his next fight will be, when he’ll be able to breathe again. He tongues the scab inside his cheek while he presses the button that changes the slides as his boss prompts it. Then, he can taste blood; the cut’s split open, and all he can do is sit there and swallow it. Forty minutes pass, his lips are sticky with blood and he runs his tongue over them. 

When the lights come up and the presentation’s over, he’s expected to be all smiles and shake the hands of these two corporate suits. 

And he does.

And he smiles.  

And blood seeps through his teeth, stains his lips, and this guy he’s shaking hands with could be thinking about the well-done presentation, could be thinking about how sales are up and that’s great, really, that’s fantastic, but he’s probably not. 

* * *

It’s another two weeks and another three fight club meets before Jason is kicked out. The key to the apartment doesn’t work and he tries it twice more before he knocks loudly on the door. It’s Thursday night and he wants a shower before he ends up stained with his own blood. 

He bangs a fist against the door. “Liza! It’s Jason.”

He can hear the shuffling of people moving around inside, low murmuring voices, and maybe it’s Riley on the other side with her.

It’s not.

It’s Daisy, and behind her stands Liza and two packed boxes. There are dark circles under Liza’s eyes but a determination in them. He can feel the daggers Daisy is shooting at him. It might hurt if his body wasn’t already bruised. “Jason,” is her only way of greeting and her tone is anything but amiable. Jason blows out a breath, feels tension digging its claws into his shoulders. 

“What’s going on?” He’s not sure why he asks. He can see two of his shirts laying across the edge of one of the boxes. “My key didn’t work.”  


“Don’t be an idiot, Jason.” It’s Daisy speaking. Her hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail and Jason has seen the look on her face before, but never directed toward him. He thinks about how she was going to be his sister-in-law. “I think you know exactly what’s going on here.” In the background, Liza has her arms crossed over her chest, standing tall. “I should be asking _you_ that question but honestly, seeing you now, I don’t care. Take your stuff and get out.” 

Jason ignores Daisy and her quick, dismissive bluntness, turns to Liza, wonders why he’s bothering when he knows it won’t get him anywhere. Liza was always one to stick by her decisions. “Liza. You don’t have to do this.” 

“Yes, I do,” she says and he gets the same feeling he had when Riley walked away. “You were doing so well, Jason, so well, and then it was like ... Everything went downhill. Really quickly. I’m still worried about you, I still care about you, but I can’t live with you. You disappear for nights, you come back with bruises and you refuse to tell me the truth.” She shakes her head. “You need help but until you get it, I can’t live with you.” 

Jason tries to tell her again that _no, liza, let me stay, i’m getting better but i have to do it my way_ but her comment about his disappearing for nights throws him. His brow furrows, and he tries to think of a time he’s stayed out overnight but draws a blank. The fights last until one at the latest. Liza takes the confusion on his face for confusion at his being kicked out. She stands a little taller. “I’m sorry, Jason, but you have to leave.” 

“Shit.” He licks his lips, rubs the back of head. Her comment still has him thrown and he wants to ask about it but knows he won’t be getting anything out of her. They stare at him, expecting something from him. Jason feels the weight of their looks, returns them with one of his own. “Well, uh, alright then.” He looks to Liza. “I’ll see you around?” She doesn’t respond. He grabs the boxes and takes his leave.  

The last thing he sees before Daisy slams the door in his face is Liza’s worried face. 

The last thing he hears is Liza’s voice: “Will he be okay?”

He doesn’t stick around to hear the response. He knows he will be.

* * *

Fight Club doesn’t start for another couple hours so he takes himself, and the boxes - his only possessions now - to the bar where its held. The bartender tips his head in greeting and slides over a beer. 

Jason doesn’t pay here anymore. The owner’s given him use of the basement for the fights and two of the four bartenders are members. The boxes sit on the chair next to him, mocking him and whispering _you fucked up the only good thing in your life because you’re selfish_. He grounds out the voice by asking the bartender to turn the volume on the game up. He doesn’t pay attention to it, but the combined background noise mixes into a nice hum that lets him stop and think for a moment.

He has nowhere to go. He stares blankly at his beer. He could book a hotel room for a while. Maybe something close to the bar, or maybe something farther because he enjoys the walks at night, but it isn’t a viable long-term solution. He sighs and takes a long pull of his drink.

Loud laughter draws his attention back into the present and he spares a glance over his shoulder. Some of the regulars making their way in. They wave over at Jason. He waves back, forces a smile and tries to decide which one he’s going to beat into the cement tonight. 

They take seats around him, give him nods and pats on the back like he’s some sort of idol - and he supposes he sort of is thousands of miles away. But maybe he is here, too. Growing into one. King of the Concrete Jungle. His face twists up; he likes the idea but he doesn’t. It doesn’t feel entirely right. 

He lets the guys get him another beer and no one asks him about the boxes now tucked behind the bar. 

He counts down the minutes until he can fight.  

* * *

When the fight starts, his vision tunnels on the kid across from him and the only thing he can hear is the sound of the ocean.

* * *

 “Yo, Jason. You coming?” 

No, he says, I’m staying for a bit. I need the air. Keith nods and the last of the guys trickle out and make their way back home. Jason is sporting a black eye on top of his old one and a cut lip (again), and he can breathe a little easier. The weight of what happened earlier with Liza seems almost insignificant out here with no one but himself and the stars. 

He stares up at the sky, counts the stars, sits on his stack of boxes and wonders what the fuck he’s going to do for the night. Keith eyed the boxes when he showed up, shot Jason a look that said he knew what was up, but said nothing out loud. Jason prefers it that way. He doesn’t want to have to talk about it with anyone but himself, in all honesty. He can take care of himself. He _has_ taken care of himself. 

Blood trickles out of the cut on his lip and he swipes his tongue over it. A faint coppery taste hits his tastebuds.

_“What are you doing out here, hermano?”_  

Jason closes his eyes, thinks, hopes that maybe he’s hearing things. 

_“I said: What are you doing out here all by yourself?”_

Oh for fuck’s sake, Jason wants to say. 

_“You want a cigarette?”_  

Jason opens his eyes. Vaas stands in his line of sight, hand out offering a cigarette. “I told you that I don’t--” He cuts himself short, remembers the quiet itch for nicotine that’s been under his skin for days. He takes it. Vaas offers a lighter. 

It doesn’t burn like he thought it would. It’s a comfort he didn’t know he really wanted. He blows the smoke out, watches it dissipate. He wonders what Liza is doing, wonders what Riley is doing, flexes his free hand and relishes in the sting from his bruised knuckles.   

 _“Are you going to answer me now? What're you doing?”_  

Jason takes another drag to stem the minor wave of dizziness that washes over him. “Nothing,” he replies with. 

_“I know that’s not true, Jason. You don’t have anywhere to go.”_

Jason glances to the pirate, a cocky grin plastered all over Vaas’ face like he’s somehow pleased that Jason is out on his own. “Maybe, maybe not,” is the response he gives. Once, he might have shot back with an indignant response, but he’s tired of the pirate’s arrogance. “It’s none of your business.” 

 _“Au contraire, my friend, it is my business._ ” Vaas looks pleased with himself again. Annoyance digs into Jason’s chest. _“My business is your business. That’s how it works these days. You’ll understand soon enough.”_  

Vaas’ obliqueness grinds at him and he moves to stand up. Vaas steps into his personal space. Their face-to-face and Jason wonders how good the other man is in a fist fight. Vaas seems to know what Jason is thinking, holds his hands up. _“I’m not here to fight you,”_ he says but Jason feels an unspoken yet at the end of the sentence. _“You need a place to stay. I can help you. Just ask.”_

“You think I’m staying with _you_? Of all people?” 

_“Sure. You won’t ask anyone else. You might stay at a hotel for a while, but I’ve got a place.”_

“You’re staying at a cheap fucking motel. No, thank you.” Jason moves to collect his boxes, but Vaas grabs his arm and twists Jason around. Jason grinds his teeth; the arm is bruised from where he fell on it during the fight. Vaas finger’s dig into the bruise.  

_“Please,_ ” he says. _“I insist.”_

Jason feels a million different conflicting things about Vaas. Each of them fights to get their voice heard. His head begins to pound and he rolls the cigarette between his fingers, exhales as he stares up at the sky.

He wonders what constellations he’d see on Rook Island. He never had the time to look. 

“Just for the night.” 

Vaas hauls one of the boxes up. _“One night is more than enough.”_


End file.
